Green Gestapo: EPA Spends $75 Million a Year on SWAT Teams

Most people would probably assume that the EPA is just another benign government agency, that is nothing more than dead weight on the American taxpayer. After all, most bureaucracies don’t amount to much more than that. But in the American police state, even an agency tasked with protecting the environment can turn to armed paramilitary thugs to enforce the law.

According to an investigation by the Illinois based watchdog group known as Open the Books, the EPA has been dabbling in law enforcement for some time now. They examined thousands of checks worth $93 billion, that were written by the agency between the year 2000 and 2014. They found that the EPA spends roughly $75 million on “criminal enforcement” every year, which mostly goes to 200 special agents capable of conducting SWAT raids. They bought body armor, ammo, firearms, drones, amphibious assault ships, and night vision goggles with these tax dollars.

According to Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejewski “We were shocked ourselves to find these kinds of pervasive expenditures at an agency that is supposed to be involved in clean air and clean water…Some of these weapons are for full-scale military operations.” But what do you expect? The war on drugscrimeterrorism pollution isn’t going to fight itself.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .